


Subway Rides

by Gabz



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco, Rock Music RPF
Genre: M/M, Romance, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-06 21:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabz/pseuds/Gabz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have been taking the earliest train ride everyday since past three weeks only to quietly watch each other. They have never talked each other.</p><p>They can’t believe they have always belonged to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subway Rides

**Author's Note:**

> There are basicly three parts, and the three of them have slightly different narration styles. It was completely intentional.

Monday.

Six and a half in the morning and I’m here, waiting in the subway station while people and trains come and go, just like I’ve been doing for the past three weeks. The weather is cold outside and I’m wearing this red jacket I fell in love with yesterday when I was walking down the streets, looking for some new clothing. It’s a bright red faux leather jacket, as bright as blood, with golden zippers and several pockets sewed with golden thread.

A quarter to seven and I still think of why I haven’t crossed the wagon yet to say something to you, like “It’s cold inside here” or “Did you see the morning news on CNN?”, but, somehow, I can’t. I feel like I am never going to catch your attention because I am nothing special or out of common, just average; and average’s not enough. I wish I could be like those men you see in the magazines, those who makes any guy –gay or not– turn and say “Whoa, I wish I had those legs”, or that hair, or that skin. Those men who get stuck in your head for hours, days, even months. I wish I just were that special in front of your eyes so I could get that stuck in your head.

_Obsession_ may not be the correct word, but it is the first that comes to mind.

Five to seven and I hear familiar steps walking down the stairs and turn to see who it is, just like I’ve been doing for the last two weeks; and it is you, as punctual as always, walking with your old Converses and your tight Levi’s. I slightly smile as I put my hands in my pockets and take a couple of steps forward while a train arrives to the platform. I hear the sound of the brakes when it stops and the operator opens the doors. A few people come out the wagon and then we enter; you, me and these insignificant people around us.

They might, or might not be important to this world; they might, or might not be working somewhere to help other people somehow; but I don’t really care about them, all I see is you, walking through the doors before they close. These are the same doors you walk through everyday, maybe because these always get you closer to the escalators in the station you leave the train everyday at seven and a half. These are the same doors I’ve been walking through during the past three weeks, only because of you.

Suddenly your ringtone, a simple but beautiful MIDI version of Beethoven’s _Ode To Joy_ , blows up into the wagon right after the train started its movement, and you answer with a really sweet whisper.

“Hello. Yes, it’s me, Ryan. I’m on the subway right now; I’ll call you back when I get there.”

Oh, your voice, as sweet as an angels choir. You try to keep it low but it sneaks through the cold air and echoes inside my ears. I shiver a little and sit down in the last empty seat of the wagon, and I cannot take my eyes off you. You look sleepy by the way you close your eyes while holding the pole and you suddenly wake up seconds later when the train stops in the next station. The woman in front of me stands up and walks out the train and then you sit down where she was.

I bet you can’t even imagine this guy —me, in front of you— is watching closely everything that you do, and totally adores it. You, right in front of me, won’t ever know I’m running out of clothing in order to find something to attract you, that you’re the reason why I bought this eye-catching jacket. I feel like I’m melting when I see your long, thin fingers running through your wavy, long, bright brown hair, and then it stays comfortably there, like a bird on its nest. Then your chest starts to tense and you yawn against the window glass, covering your mouth with your free hand.

And this, just being near from you, feels like heaven. This is the best half hour of my day, of everyday; and, after this, I only work, eat, sleep and dream to see you again. And you start to watch the lights moving quickly through the window pane, and only seconds after that, your eyes, your beautiful hazel eyes, are suddenly are looking into mine.

You are looking at me.

_You are looking at me._

_Heaven_ may not be the correct word, but it is the first that comes to mind.

I can’t think about anything else but this moment. This gaze it is so intense I totally ignore my shivers, it’s so incredible I can’t even listen to the people going out and getting into the wagon in this station, it’s so unreal I have to close my eyes because I may look like a creeper with the way I’m looking at you. And I hear a sigh. I could swear, with eyes closed, it was yours.

Gracious. Amazing. _Wonderful._

Now, seriously, what have I done?

I open my eyes and I notice yours are closed again, and I wish I wasn’t so stupid to break that amazing visual connection we just had. I don’t know if you felt it, but I’m sure I felt something fabulous and amazing, unlike any other feeling. I don’t know if you felt it, but I can swear we were made for each other. I knew it since the first time I saw you, that’s why I quitted using the seven and a half express and started to take this train.

I can’t lie; I’m really hopeless right now. I don’t have the guts to tell you everything you’ve made me feel through these quiet train rides, where the silence is the only thing we have shared. I would sound stupid if I tell you how much I’d love to spend just one day with you, even when we have never spoken to each other.

Another stop in another station; the same mechanical. People walk out, people walk in. And there’s this old woman walking with a cane into the wagon, and all the seats are occupied. I am going to give her mine, but you suddenly stand up and gently let her sit down where you were. This is not the first time this happens, but I can’t help grinning when you act like such a gentleman. If you have a girlfriend, or wife, or even best friend, she must feel really pleased by you. And now you are standing there, holding the metallic bar until the lady seated next to me leaves the wagon.

You sit right here, next to me.

_You sit right here, next to me._

Suddenly I feel my heart beating faster. This is the first time this happens, and it’s hard because I can’t turn sideways to see you without showing mi interest in you – even when I think I’ve always been pretty obvious. This would be too much, _excessively_ obvious. I can’t help blushing my cheeks due to my awkwardness. I wish I could be brave enough to say anything to you. _Anything_.

The train takes a sharp bend and you, kind of sleepy, fall accidentally against my shoulder.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” you apologize from sudden, and that’s my excuse for looking at you and talk to you. “I’m really…”

“Nevermind,” I say, being more harsh than I really wanted to be. It’s all I am capable do when I have these amazing eyes in front of me.

A pair of beautiful, intimidating hazel pupils, looking at my eyes and, maybe, catching a glimpse of my soul. I can’t hold back these little shivers inside of me when your grin is this close to me.

“This is what happens after spending all night watching WWE fights on TV,” you mutter.

“You like wrestling? Whoa,” I say, more naturally than I expected. Plus, I giggle. Seconds later I realize I should have not answered that easy.

You just grin again, and I’m dying to your divine smile. I can bet even the angels don’t have a smile as perfect as yours. While I’m loosing my marbles for you, you manage to say “It’s funny when you have nothing else to do on Sunday nights,” you take a look around and then add into a whisper “But those guys seriously scare the hell out of me,” That’s better. I was already thinking if I should make myself a wrestler to catch your attention, thank God I won’t. Ten seconds later you ask “You take this train every morning, don’t you?”

I blink twice before answering your question. “Yes, since three weeks ago,” and I should slap myself after that slip… please, you, stranger, don’t ask why. I’m sure you couldn’t handle the awkward truth. 

_Stalker_ may not be the correct word, but it is the first that comes to mind.

“Me too,” you mutter, now staring at the window. I’m sorry if you may think I’m creepy, but I can’t help it. And I’m thinking if it wasn’t a coincidence I unusually took this train the same day you did it for the first time… was it matter of destiny? Did I miss something important between these last weeks?

The train maintains its invariable ride between the last two stations before you walk out of here. It was always the same, this never changed until destiny, god, heavens, whatever you want to call it; wanted this to change.

Suddenly, everything is dark and a loud, horrible sound fills the cold air. The wagon shakes strongly and I can feel how you hold my arm, but not strongly enough to stop me from falling to the floor. My head hits the floor; something’s making my right leg hurt as hell and all the people screaming around just make everything worse.

Seconds after, people start to calm down. Some cellphone screens light up the wagon, letting me see the nearest thing to me. You’re above me, and I can see the fear in your wide opened hazel eyes.

I can only see the light in your eyes while your wet fingers touch my forehead. I can barely feel the stains of cold blood on my face just where you touched me. That was the only thing I could perceive at that moment, nothing else.

I can only see darkness in your eyes, and everywhere else.

  
  
  


White. Whitest whiteness ever. A bright white bulb lights this little room with white empty walls.

I blink twice before my eyes start to look around slowly. It takes me about thirty long seconds to remember everything that happened on the subway the last time I was awake. I remember him, his scared gaze, his fingers stained with my own blood. I close my eyes for a while, thinking of that day. I can’t even realize if it was last month or last week, neither few hours ago. I can barely remember the few words we exchanged before the accident. I don’t even know what caused the accident, I just…

I just realize there’s someone covered with a white blanket, sitting on a chair and sleeping over my legs; someone with caramel brown hair and long fingers. Someone possibly called Ryan – unknown last name. Someone who has been driving me insane for the past three, four, five, whatever weeks.

I bit my lower lip for a second, thinking of a reason for this guy being here. I don’t really have anything to do with him, besides my obsession, we only exchanged no more than fifty words that last day. What is he doing here, twisting my mind and making me go on overload? Does he know that? Does he have the least idea of what’s going on in my heart now that I wake up and see him here with me?

On the other hand, I can’t deny I’m excited as I’ve never been before. Geez, I’m alive and he’s here with me! His chest goes up and down slow and peacefully, I can barely hear his breath. I wish he could be awake to explain me what happened but at the same time I’d love to see him sleep forever.

I try to sit on the hospital bed, but my head hurts when I try to separate it from the pillow. It hurts so much I can’t avoid a little groan, which suddenly wakes him from his sweet dreams.

“Oh, you woke up,” Ryan whispers, blinking repeatedly, still sleepy. He takes the white blanket off him, and I can’t help smile facing the fact he was wearing my red jacket. Somehow, he realizes I am looking at it, and immediately excuses “Oh, sorry, I just… I mean, it was – it _is_ really cold inside here and…”

“Don’t worry… it looks great on you,” I grin, and his cheeks blush for a moment.

_Priceless_ may not be the correct word, but it is the first that comes to mind.

We quietly look each other’s eyes for a while. I ignore his reasons, but I can say all what I’m thinking is about him and what should I ask him first.

“This jacket also got me into a big trouble,” he says before I could ask anything, surprising me.

“Really?” I ask, and he nods as answer. “Why? What happened?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Come on. My jacket, my business,” I say, and he laughs at my expression.

“A woman who works at the same place that I, my boss actually – or should I just call her my ex-girlfriend?” He asks to self, and I can’t avoid some kind of glare at my stare. “Anyway, she came here after the accident, and I… well, I was wearing your jacket and… she saw I had really nothing, so she _demanded_ me to go back to work,” he’s saying, and then he stops for a few seconds. “I said no, because I had someone to care about. And then she started bitchin’ about how careless I was with her and, even worse, the job. Then she asked about the jacket and…” Ryan stops again, giggling.

“What did you tell her?” I ask, curious.

“I told her it was not mine, and she asked where it came from. I…” He tries to talk, but his giggles stops and he blushes again. I feel like flying over the clouds, how could he be even prettier than I thought? “Are you sure you won’t kill me after hearing this?”

“I still haven’t heard anything that could be a good reason to kill someone,” I say, thinking something like “ _…except for the fact you had a girlfriend_ ” but totally ignoring it at the same time.

“But this could give you a reason…” he warns me, grinning again. I do it too, and if I tried to stop it I’m sure it wouldn’t have worked. “Uhm, we don’t live together, and she always told me to buy a car because she thinks the subway is for _proletarians_ , which is some kind of big insult to her, and I really have the money but… I just don’t want to spend it in a car, so that was always a topic that made some trouble. Anyway, I told her ‘This is from someone who actually saved my life, which is more important to me than all your so-called-love crap,’ and… she threw me a bunch of ground. _On your jacket_. And she ran to her car and yelled me a big ‘YOU ARE FIRED’. So I came here without a partner, without a job and wearing a dirty jacket. Still want me to keep the gift of life?”

I laugh the loudest my headache lets me, and he is even more blushed when I open my eyes after the laughter. He looks kind of amused, but proud in some way. His hazel eyes have some kind of happy glare that’s hard to ignore, like, after that, he is proud of himself of being dumped by his ex-girlfriend and ex-boss, or either of proud of the fact that he was able to finish his story.

“Uhm, the only thing I can’t be sure about is your reason for not buying a car.”

“Traffic,” he answers, but his giggle tells me he’s lying. “That has nothing to do with your ‘jacket business’, so I don’t really have to answer that question.”

“There are only few reasons why a man with enough money doesn’t buy himself a car and keeps using the nasty, popular and full-of- _proletarians_ subway, even when his love asked him a thousand times,” I say, obviously joking.

“There's a deeper reason than those you could imagine.”

“Are you calling my mind ‘flat’?”

“Brendon…”

He calls my name.

_He calls my name and holds my fucking hand._

I ask myself where he could have gotten it, but then I realized they needed at least my ID to admit me in the hospital. He could have taken it from my wallet himself, or had read it anywhere else.

I tighten his hand into mine without dissolving our eye contact. He bites his bottom lip for a moment, and I got a glimpse of a reason, maybe selfish and convenient, but a valid one, actually.

Me.

“What happened in the subway?” I ask, kind of innocently, lost in his eyes. He is part of my little world at this moment, mixing his pale skin with the white walls, only contrasting with his caramel hair and my red jacket.

“It was a collision, our train crashed with another one. No one died, fortunately,” he explains, now with a really calm voice. I am going to ask something else but my head terribly hurts again, making me moan kind of quietly. He quickly stands up and walks until he is by my head’s side. “You suffered a traumatism on this side of your cranium,” he said, pointing to the nearest side of my head to him, the right one. “And the metallic bar that was by your side on the wagon broke and got stuck inside your leg. Nothing severe enough to put your life in danger, according to the doctors.”

“What’s that thing about me saving your life?” I ask, trying to push it to another answer I wanted.

“I fell on you,” he says, his cheeks blushing involuntarily again. “So my body didn’t hit the floor or anything else.”

“Thank god I was there,” I grin, joking, making him smile too. I could never get tired of his stunning smile, especially because of those soft rose silk lips. “And don’t think I say it because of your incredible nursery abilities, I mean…”

“What do you mean?” he asks, after I went quiet for a while.

“Why are you still using the subway instead of buying a car?”

“You’re persistent, aren’t you?” He complains, but right after that his expression goes softer again. “That’s a long story.”

“I think we have enough time to talk about it,” I say, before he sits again on his chair.

“Except because that’s another reason for you to slide my head off,” he said, drawing an imaginary line with his index finger around his neck.

“Come on, stop it. I would never dare to put a finger on you, not even kidding.”

“Why?” He asks, curiously.

“Don’t change the topic.”

“You changed it first!” he exclaims. I can’t give up so fast, so I try one of my best tools to get what I want: my pouty face. “…Alright, you won, but it’s only because you are the convalescent one,” he finally says, and I can’t help a satisfaction smile. “I started this last job about six months ago, and I always took the express train at seven and a half, but it was because I liked to arrive exactly with my boss. When we started to date eachother, she asked me to arrive earlier to work because she didn’t want the others to know about our relationship. I planned my day to get the seven and a quarter train, but I got too early to the train station, at five to seven. I remember seeing someone waiting the seven o’clock train sitting on the floor with his back against a wall, holding a bag between his crossed legs and listening to Nirvana’s Come as you are. He didn’t care about the way people looked at him, actually, I felt like nobody gave a damn about what he was doing. Then I randomly thought about myself and how I was acting different in order to make everybody see I actually had something with my boss, despite her intentions to ‘hide it’. I felt kind of stupid at that moment and I thought it would be interesting to watch this guy every day. I know it was kind of a stalker thing, but…”

_Stalker_. Ryan keeps talking faster and faster but the only thing I can think about is the word _stalker_. I didn’t want to tell him anything because I thought it would be really creepy, but now he partially admitted that he kind of stalks me… then what I did wasn’t stalking him at all.

“…but, somehow, that person was like a part of my life and…”

“Ryan…”

“…I thought I would never talk to him, but this morning…”

“Ryan…”

“…I managed it to sit right next to him in the wagon, and we finally…”

“RYAN.”

Ryan suddenly stops talking and keeps staring at my eyes. He stands up from his chair again and walks closer to my face while finally saying “I didn’t want to buy a car because I wanted to see you every day, but I was coward enough to...”

His hand was close enough from me before he stopped his speech. I just had to pull his arm to get his face close to mine, very close. Now we’re breathing the same air, and his eyes are still looking into mine, as my eyes look into his.

Hazelnut. Fear. Light. Darkness.

Love?

  
  
  


Monday.

Six and a half in the morning and I’m here, waiting in the subway station while people and trains come and go, just like I’ve been doing for the past four weeks, tapping the ground with one of my feet. The weather feels a little bit warmer than the past week and I’m wearing this adorable gray military jacket that looks like it was found in a graveyard, but it’s still fashionable. I don’t really care about how old could this be, but I feel like it’s part of my past, present and future. This might be really old since it has some medals from ’74 to ’93.

A quarter to seven and I’m starting to feel kind of desperate. I look around the subway station, like I’ve never been here before. This place is barely decorated with abstract ceramic art on the walls, some advertising fences and a nice red-orange-yellow mosaic on the floor. It makes me feel a little bit hungry, according to some researches about the use of colours in marketing campaigns. Anyway, I haven’t had my breakfast yet so…

My mind stops thinking by the time I feel an underground breeze announcing an incoming train. It feels like it takes years to stop, but it finally does. I don’t walk to the doors when they open, I just wait and watch the people walking off the wagon until my eye catches a bright, red jacket in the crowd.

“Finally,” I mutter. He waves his head as he pulls a huge suitcase.

It takes a while until he notices me and a beautiful smile appears all over his face. I walk into the crowd and manage to get to him.

“How did you manage to get this huge thing inside the subway? I thought they could even sue you for carrying something this big” I ask, helping him out with his suitcase.

“You know how this system works, sweetie,” He says and then he winkles to me, making me burst into laugh.

“Of course I do know how it works: you just fall over some people and they’ll let you do whatever you want,” I say, pulling the suitcase upstairs. It was so heavy that we feel like climbing a mountain. When we reach the street, Ryan asks.

“Where’s the building?” 

“Fifteen blocks away from here,” I laugh and keep on walking while he’s looking everywhere around, kind of pissed. He didn’t get what I said. “Come on here, Ry. Say hi to our new baby,” I shout, waving my hand in front of a nice red Chevrolet Spark.

“Holy shit, Brendon. I told you…”

“And I told you I didn’t care.” I open the trunk and place the suitcase inside of it. “Isn't it pretty?”

“Well, it looks like a girl’s car, in my opinion,” he says as I close the trunk. “Especially because of the colour. I mean, it looks very _perfect-passionate-kiss-red_.”

“Well, let me open the door of your perfect-passionate-kiss-red car, monsieur,“ I say, opening the co-pilot door and looking into his eyes. He just grins, I grin, and then we both laugh together. This is a good beginning… a very good one.


End file.
